Mass Solo Revolt

Band Mem­bers:

Mar­tin Brum­meler
James Frye

Albums:

The Sap — LP — 2007 Com­mu­nity Bil­ly­goat Records
Easy Mark — LP — 2008 New Town Artist Ser­vices
Bend In Time — LP — 2010 Hop Skip Records

Bio:

MSR mines the past for the best of the minor keys, bass lines, and angu­lar drums that strike sym­pa­tico in your mem­ory, then blends them with an intri­cacy that is as unex­pected as a sucker punch to an old sweet wound. Not as much raised by, as cat­a­pulted from, the best of Fugazi, Super­chunk and J Mas­cis, Mass Solo Revolt has taken a blue­print drawn years ago and built a sonic empire with it’s own unique laws, the first being this: with­out fail, you must always, always pay attention.

Seven years ago, a self released record of MSR’s caught the ear of Fugazi front­man Ian Mack­aye, a cir­cum­stance that led front­man Mar­tin Brum­meler into the Inner Ear stu­dios to record in that hal­lowed space. Born of this fer­tile play­ground was the 2005 release Easy Mark, an audi­to­rily addic­tive col­lab­o­ra­tion with Chad Clark.

Easy Mark was lauded by fans and crit­ics alike, cited by NPR as “har­ness­ing those raw sounds from the early ‘90s to cre­ate a less pol­ished, yet still infec­tious, throw­back indie rock sound.”, and as pulling off “a mod­ern rock coup…an album that at once dis­plays influ­ences proudly while still com­ing off as totally orig­i­nal and utterly con­tem­po­rary” by The All Music Guide.

The 2009 release of Bend In Time changed the land­scape painted in Easy Mark, tak­ing the brash hooks and lyrics and exposed angst deeper…darker. With the deeply expres­sive gui­tar work and deft twists and turns that are a trade­mark, Bend In Time delves art­fully into dark recesses, giv­ing frus­tra­tion and hope and the stretches in between a sound­track to get lost in. Amer­i­cana UK describes the record as “keep­ing every­thing tightly con­trolled and vis­ceral. Brum­meler is lead­ing MSR down their own glo­ri­ously ambigu­ous, thrillingly noisy path”

This noted ambi­gu­ity will be best illus­trated with the upcom­ing release Soft Power which emerges this spring. While the musi­cal DNA remains intact, this record ush­ers MSR out of the chrysalis a far dif­fer­ent spec­i­men than it went in. Dynamic as always, but also thought­ful and unex­pect­edly vul­ner­a­ble by turns, Brum­meler has cre­ated yet another super­high­way for his unique thought process. This record reeks of free­dom and aban­don and cer­tainty, and occa­sion­ally a new essence alto­gether: peace.

The very best music chal­lenges you. It ques­tions. It invites.When you are help­less to do any­thing but try and some­how get inside what you are hear­ing, you know that some­thing impor­tant is happening.Whether trav­el­ing through the con­duit of Mar­tin Brum­meler as a solo con­trib­u­tor, or as a 4 piece, Mass Solo Revolt’s music is raw energy. Some­times the ten­sion of a life about to explode, oth­ers, beauty glow­er­ing with the power to oblit­er­ate, there is some­thing about the yearn­ing and hon­esty of this music that comes through like pure grain alcohol.

Not every band can accom­plish the elu­sive thing that MSR con­stantly deliv­ers. Receiv­ing trans­mit­ted emo­tion until it becomes a pal­pa­ble feel­ing is a work­out, but if you have the will to join the empire, to obey the car­di­nal rule:“Pay fuck­ing atten­tion”, the pay­offs are multidimensional.

Then sud­denly, music as mere enter­tain­ment seems to be the most super­fi­cial arti­fice there is.

–Amy Kelsey, March 2011

Links:

www.myspace.com/masssolorevolt
www.facebook.com/pages/Mass-Solo-Revolt/10649450228
www.reverbnation.com/masssolorevolt

Con­tact:

Man­age­ment: Misty Dawn
Mistydawn(at)westerncivrock(dot)com